The name Peter F. Hamilton was not familiar to me and I thought I knew all of the big name science-fiction writers. While popular and commercially successful, this trilogy is closer to being space opera and so never won any major awards which could be why I never noticed it. The books are also notable for being huge doorstoppers. That kind of length isn’t that unusual for the current era of web series but present real logistical issues when printed on paper. The cast of characters is extensive and Hamilton takes his time to describe his setting so the plot doesn’t really get going until a few hundred pages in. For a long while, I enjoyed the action adventure story well enough but couldn’t see much point in it. Then the action got started and I must admit that I got hooked.
I held off on watching this because I feel that zombies are way overused in media and it didn’t even seem like this adds anything new to the genre. I was persuaded my mind due to a friend’s recommendation and because I have a newfound appreciation for the work of Alex Garland. In the event, this turned out to be a perfectly cromulent action movie and a decent coming-of-age film. Thematically, it’s not that interesting despite an attempt to suggest a mythic link to England’s past. But it is entertaining and even does a bit of worldbuilding.
The slew of awards and international recognition this film won more than qualifies it a must-watch. I was hesitant to approach it however, being cognizant of its contentious and depressing nature. Indeed as the end of this documentary itself shows, the crisis at Masafer Yatta that is its focus, has since been overshadowed by the October 7 attacks. The Palestinian perspective it offers is both interesting and invaluable. Its images show exactly how a people is smothered to death slowly over the course of decades. Yet it probably doesn’t offer much that is new to those who are already reasonably well-read on the subject and is too roughly put together to be a great documentary.
The Remastered version of the game includes all three parts of the so-called The City Never Sleeps expansion. The story takes place after the events of the main game itself and features the characters Black Cat, Hammerhead and Silver Sable. Miles Morales gets a bit of character development as this does lead to his own game but Mary-Jane Watson unfortunately has a reduced role. She does tease Peter Parker over his relationships with other women but that’s about it. I disliked the power-ups Hammerhead gets to make his a worthy adversary here but the rest of the story isn’t bad. It does mean that the combat difficulty is ramped up significantly, enough to encourage me to regularly use gadgets which was no doubt the designers’ intention.
This is lighter fare that my wife noticed while we were browsing through Netflix. One would have expected this to be another manga adaptation but in this instance, the reverse is true. It’s an original story written for animation and then later adapted as a manga. The core idea is cutesy yet sound enough: a teenage girl feels depressed by her familial situation and prefers to escape by turning into a cat. Unfortunately this is also inextricably tied to her infatuation for a boy in her class and this is just juvenile. This is a film that was made for the young adult market and it’s fine in that regard, but it’s not for us.
It seems that despite having only two feature films under his belt, Zach Cregger is the current hot director of horror. This one won critical claim, has an A-list cast, and most importantly made a lot of money. It admittedly gets all of the basics: good filmmaking techniques, multiple perspectives to hint at a larger mystery and shows restraint in its use of supernatural elements. Unfortunately you strip away the layers, the core is revealed to be empty and utterly uninteresting. Once you understand what is happening, none of it is remotely plausible and the whole thing falls flat for me.
It was in this film that Jacques Tati first introduced to the world the character of Monsieur Hulot, whom we’ve seen in Playtime. This is a simpler and less ambitious film, which unfortunately also means that it’s less interesting. The gags and hijinks are mildly amusing at best and not that inventive compared to what we’ve seen from the likes of Rowan Atkinson. Nonetheless there’s a certain charm in the seaside resort town of Saint-Marc-sur-Mer where this was shot and this film portrays a specific style of going on holiday which now feels quaint, so it might still be worth watching for those with some affection for all things French.
